171. How to Build Your Real Estate Portfolio with Other People’s Money

0:00For the last 10 years, I spent growing different Airbnb companies and shorts and rental companies. OPM, other people's money, right? Like that is the fastest way to scaling assets. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Helpful Padcast where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses. And today I am so excited to have Eric Moeller, founder of FreeWild, a revolutionary cabin rental company blending nature's beauty with the convenience of city access with a string of successful ventures under his belt, including Coda Homes and Overnight Success. Eric's here to share how he's redefining hospitality, scanning his brand and creating extraordinary stays that guests can't stop talking about.

0:39Eric, I am so, so excited to have you on today. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me, Ryan. Appreciate it. Let's wind back the clock a little bit just for our listeners, just to lay a foundation of who you are, because you grew up in a construction family, but then you pivoted into real estate. Just to lay that foundation of where your journey begins, what inspired that shift into real estate? Yeah, so long story short, I was in high school giving a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. My high school teacher that I had at the time thought it was a great book for me to read.

1:08And once I dove into that, that was like the introduction for me to think outside of trading my hours for dollars and started focusing on really kind of just scaling personal wealth, family wealth, all of that. And because I have the background in construction and I was a carpenter for a little bit, that was just a natural path for me to get into flipping houses at the age of 18. So yeah, went from right from high school to buying my first property and flipping and figuring out the whole real estate and entrepreneur journey. Oh my God. Well, I want to ask about that. So you're by your first house at 18 and you're flipping it.

1:46So did you go to college for this or were you just full-time flipping right after high school essentially? No, I mean, I barely graduated high school. So I, yeah, I barely graduated. That's why my teacher, Frank, who I'm still in touch with to today, gave me that book because he noticed that I was thinking outside of the box. I was asking questions about how to make money, all of this and all those things, but didn't really have any direction. He knew college and I knew college was not for me at all, which most entrepreneurs have similar stories to that. So I read that book, graduated high school, went to school to get my real estate license at night as I was in the carpentry union.

2:28So I was working during the day as a carpenter, as an apprentice, and then studying for real estate at night. This was back in the day when they were giving subprime mortgages to anybody with a pulse, right? So I figured out how to leverage somebody else's credit. So I brought my dad in who had good credit. I leveraged his credit, got a mortgage. We bought the crappiest house on our block. I moved into the basement and now I was working as a carpenter during the day and renovating the house at night. And we flipped it a few months later, made some money and just kept doing it. As you said, it's building the foundation of what you're doing at FreeWild Now.

3:02Let's stay in tune for this because we are going to talk about that. Before we do that, though, I want to ask one more question about Rich Dad, Poor Dad, because I feel like an entrepreneurial mindset is something that you kind of have as a kid and it's always being developed. But one quick take it way for rich dad, poor dad that has shaped your entrepreneurial mindset. I would love to hear that. I think that's the biggest thing is the difference between buying assets and liabilities, focusing on scaling assets that will pay you while you're sleeping, while you're not working. Again, I grew up in a blue collar town, a blue collar family.

3:35So the only thing I knew about making money was working your butt off as long as possible. And you make more money, the more hours you work, right? And the better your skillset gets, the more your hourly rate goes up. But at the end of the day, you had to show up to work at the next day, put eight, 10, 12 hours in five, six days a week. And that's how you make your money. I didn't want to do that. Grew up in construction. It was very difficult. My dad had a, you know, a concrete company on the weekend. So after school, I would work for that during the weekends, I would have to lay concrete. So it was rough, man.

4:09So that was the biggest lesson was like, you know, how do you buy assets and have those assets grow over time to pay you while you're sleeping. That was the biggest takeaway. Yeah. And all of this skill set that you're building and this mindset eventually leads to Free Wild. So let's talk a little bit more. How would you describe Free Wild for the listener? Because I want to really dive into like the short-term rental market and how you guys stand out and how other entrepreneurs can do that. But before we do that, what is Free Wild? Yeah, so Free Wild is a boutique hotel brand. We buy old cabin communities in nature locations that are two hours from big cities, metro areas.

4:47And we do a full renovation and we bring these up to modern standards, modern designs. So absolutely beautiful cabins in these beautiful, you know, mountain towns and nature towns. And the whole concept of the brand is to inspire people through design, inspire people through beautiful nature, and then also create a space to help people disconnect from technology. So we have a part of our cabin that we call wild mode that encourages people to lock away their cell phones while they're at our properties and really just kind of be in the moment, be in nature and be present. Yeah, I love it. So it sounds like it's very like mindful, honestly, like experience, like going to these like beautifully designed houses, beautifully like designed experiences in a way and then putting your phone away.

5:33So it sounds like it's really elevating that with a beautiful experience around you. Yeah, and look, not every traveler decides to do that. And, you know, we're not an off-grid cabin community either. So we're not forcing you into it, but we're encouraging you to take a moment, be present, be in the beautiful cabin that you just rented in nature and get some additional benefit from unplugging. So we call it disconnect to reconnect. I love it. Let's talk about the very first community you guys are building up. Because I want to talk to the entrepreneurs that may be interested in this short-term rental market.

6:06How did you guys identify the property or the location that you guys were going to go after? And let's talk about some of those next steps that you took once you did identify the property. Yeah, so we bought our first location in Idlewild, California. It's about a two-hour northeast drive from San Diego and two hours from LA. It's a town that I just loved. As soon as I moved San Diego, I'm from Jersey originally. As soon as I moved San Diego, I found Otterwild. And I would go up there pretty much every other weekend to go hiking, rent Airbnbs, and just kind of be in nature. So there's a pretty long, detailed story into how we came up with Free Wild.

6:45But during COVID, we were in Ida Wild and I was building my vision, my dream. I'm a big believer in goal setting and vision setting. And as I was building out the vision of what I wanted to create with a company that is now called Free Wild, we stumbled across this property that was for sale. And just all the stars aligned. It was the perfect property, perfect town, perfect seller. And we aligned the perfect investor to come in and help us start this company, start this vision. So we took our time with it. We didn't rush into this. We took our time building the vision. I took the time to explain that vision and refine that vision for the investors that were around me.

7:25And then as soon as we bought our property, we took our time into really intentional design and reconstruction of the property. So yeah, that's been open now for a year, which has been amazing. It took us about, I don't know, a year and a half to do the designs, do the construction, open it up. But now it's just absolutely amazing. It's like, guests are loving it. We're loving it. We're going to be expanding our property up there and adding 10 additional cabins. And now we're working on acquiring our second location. I want to ask, because you brought up the term investors and some people might be like, oh crap, I don't want to have to deal with investors.

8:02No way I want to do that. Is this a business model where you need investors or are there ways to get your first property without investors? Because then I feel like it gets in the real estate investing thing. So we'll love to hear your take on that. Yeah, look, I mean, it depends on the individual, right? It's like, you know, what we did up there required millions of dollars. And, you know, there's three ways of doing it. You could bring your own millions. You could go to an investor. You can go to a bank. That's as simple as it is. And if you read that book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and just, you know, investing in general, why wouldn't you get an investor?

8:35Why wouldn't you bring a bank in? Like OPM, other people's money, right? That is the fastest way to scaling assets. For me, FreeWild is a generational company. This is something I'm building that my grandkids will be able to put their hands on one day. This is, in my opinion, what's going to change the generational wealth in my family. So I'm taking my time with it. And I need investors because I got a big vision. We will have FreeWild locations and the most beautiful nature locations all around the world. and this is something I'm going to be leading and developing over the next 10 plus years, right?

9:11So yeah, investors is just part of the process of growth. I mean, if you're blessed and you have the ability to put your own millions into it, okay, that's fine. But even the wealthiest people I know leverage their money and their contacts to bring other OPM in to scale their ability to buy more assets. That should always be the game is to like acquire cash flowing assets as much as possible. This episode is brought to you by the Uplip Academy. If you're serious about launching your business, we invite you to join our exclusive program. Inside the Uplip Academy, you'll find over 11 courses, each led by real entrepreneurs actively building their own ventures.

9:48These aren't just lessons. They're step-by-step guides that get you from idea to launch that help you scale to six figures and beyond. Plus, you'll join a supportive community filled with like-minded individuals to help hold you accountable and keep you motivated. So if you're serious about launching your own business, start your 10-day free trial of the Elphaba Academy by clicking the link below. I feel like in the entrepreneurial realm, there's always a lot of pressure of grow as quick as you can, grow as quick as you can, grow as quick as you can. We saw that a lot in like 2020 with companies that had like 100 employees doing like$100 ,000 in revenue.

10:18So I appreciate you guys being able to grow this mindfully. Yeah. And just touch on that real quick. I mean, that's 100 % the reason why I'm taking my time with this. And I've decided to not play the hockey stick, right? The hockey stick growth game where it's like, just grow, grow, grow, grow, forget about profit. It's only about revenue. It's only about how much of the market we can take over. And look, that works sometimes. Most of the time it doesn't. But regardless, if you enter into that game, you got to be willing to play that game. And that's a crazy game to play. And I'll be 38 in a few months here.

10:51So I've been in entrepreneurship for 20 years now, which is kind of crazy to think about. And I've always played that game of like How fast can I grow and how big can I go and all this stuff? It's fun, but it's stressful. It takes the joy out of the journey. I recognize regardless of the size of FreeWild, what it is right now gives me so much joy, and I freaking love it. People that interact with the brand absolutely loves it. It's like, okay, this is the goal. Then over time, it's like, okay, how do we just continue to grow this in a sustainable way? One day, it might hockey stick, and if it doesn't, that's okay.

11:27but you know, gotta have fun with the process. Absolutely. And what comes with this process is of course landing your first client. Someone might be all jazzed up about this. Like, oh my gosh, like I know how to bring on investors. I wanna build something that I can love to do, but what's really important is actually landing clients. So I'd love to hear about your guys' acquisition strategy early on in the company and how that has shifted. Yeah, so I have a background. We kind of skipped over from when I started flipping houses to how I got into this business here. for the last 10 years, I spent growing different Airbnb companies and shorts and rental companies.

12:02So Airbnb is our number one traction channel. And we know how that model works. We understand the algorithms. We understand how what guests are seeking, what they're looking for. We understand how to get our listings to be at the top of the search engine. So we put a lot of effort and we still every day put a lot of effort into making sure that Airbnb is driving as many bookings as possible. But with that said, one of my goals this year was to expand. And this is why I'm on this podcast is I want to expand my business through storytelling. I want to expand my brand through storytelling. So, you know, we put a lot of effort into telling the story and the experience of our brand of FreeWild of our cabins through social media and different avenues.

12:48So when we first launched the property, 100 % of our bookings were coming in through Airbnb. Now we're about 30 % to 40 % direct bookings and the rest being on Airbnb. So eventually, we see a tilting to where our brand will have that demand, where people are coming to us through freewild.com and social media. I will always be on Airbnb. I've made millions of dollars on that platform. I love that company. It's changed my life. So we'll always be there. But yeah, what's switching now is to me, what's most important is aligning with people that connect with the brand. Right. And that's the whole thing.

13:29It's not, I used to be in the mindset of just like making money and just like renting to anybody. But now I think I've matured throughout the years and I'm focused on like serving the people that actually want to be at my properties, experiencing the brand and the ethos of what we're creating there. I love that because like, it is great to have Airbnb to get clients and stuff. And my dad, he does like some Airbnb hosting. Obviously, that's how he gets all this stuff. But you guys have built out the full-fledged social media plan. Like I go to your website, like I look at your website, I'm like, I want to go here.

13:58Like this is built out so like beautifully here. I want to stick that social media part though, because people love talking about marketing. They love hearing about marketing on this podcast. You guys have built out like a very comprehensive, like social media plan. And now it's starting to tilt where you're getting customers from social media. Can you talk about like what that social media strategy consists of? Yeah. So, and we're still redefining it and like constantly trying to figure out where's our path. Right. So like one of the first things that I noticed on social media is that most people just repeat what they see that's out there.

14:29And a lot of products and a lot of companies just have the same type of content that's out there. And it's coming from a place of how do I get more views, right? How do I get more views and followers. So there's real no soul or connection to the content that people are putting out there. And I'm talking this an experience here. You know, I did that for many, many years. And I never enjoyed the content I was creating. And I never really connected with the people that were following my content. So I wanted to shift that. And we put a lot of intention. At the end of the day, everything about FreeWild is intentional.

15:05We put so much intention into what's the feeling that we want our followers, if someone lands on one of our reels, what's the feeling we want them to have when they land on that? When they click on our page at Stay Free Wild, what's that experience like as they're going through trying to discover who we are as a company, right? So we put a lot of intention into who are we serving? Who are we talking to? What's that experience? What's that feeling? What does it look like? How do we tell this story of what we do with our cabins in a digital format? What we recognize is it all comes down to storytelling.

15:43So for us, it's storytelling. Doesn't mean that that's for everybody else. But I think the biggest takeaway for entrepreneurs trying to figure out their path in social media and just marketing in general, it's like you have to understand who you're serving. You have to understand the experience you want them to have as they interact with your media. And then it has to be authentic. It has come from a place of interest and curiosity and excitement. You know, I fell in that game for a long time of like, you know, follow me and I'll teach you five ways of making money on Airbnb. And it's like, look, if that's you and your business and you're excited about that and you're passionate about coaching and you're passionate about all of that, like that'll come out in your content.

16:23I wasn't passionate about it. Right. And it never really grew and never really had the impact. And I always struggled with creating that content. Now you go to our Instagram page. It's freaking awesome, man. We're just having so much fun creating content, aligning with influencers and content creators to create more content. And so, yeah, we're just having fun with the process. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like it all comes down to the process. But a question that I love that always just comes up when people talk about like, oh, we're having so much fun. Like, we're being authentic is like, you have to build a culture that allows for that as well, like from within to where it is fun, where it is authentic.

16:58What has been like mindful steps you've taken to like build a culture with free wild that can come off on Instagram as authentic, as fun, that you go to your websites like, oh, this is a brand I want to work with. Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. You know, we're hiring a lot of people for the company right now. So we're constantly, you know, I'm talking to so many different people that are applying for different positions. We have to talk about this a lot. And this is the end of the year. So I have a process where I go through my goal setting and reflections and all that stuff. And, you know, I looked back at when I was creating the vision of FreeWild and it's all the same stuff.

17:32That was just me by myself in my head, writing all these ideas down in my journal and like creating this process. And it's all about like, I want, if you create something from your heart, if you create something for yourself that you're looking for, that you're truly passionate about solving a problem for somebody and you get really clear on who you are as a company and who you're not as a company, you're just going to attract in more and more people that align with your values and your vision. So I literally just finished a call with our team and some of our clients. We have another part of our business called Foundry.

18:08That's a service side of the business. And I was walking them through our goal setting and reflections. And one of my reflections for this year is just like how blessed I am to be surrounded by so many incredible people that connect with this brand. And it's all the same ethos of like beautiful cabins, incredible hospitality. That's, you know, where unreasonable hospitality came from. You know, that's our number one core value and an incredible book that everyone needs to read. If you haven't read it already, it's called unreasonable hospitality. It's very connected. Like even my studio that I'm in right now, it reflects my business.

18:44You know, the shirt that I'm wearing, the clothing that I wear, literally reflects my business. It's all intertwined, right? It's part of my heart and soul that I'm putting into this. And people connect with it. Not everybody connects with it. You know, I get people all the time that's like, hey, you know, why don't you just focus on buying? They try to distract you from certain things and that's fine. But the people that I'm working with, it's just, it's incredible. The investors that we're aligned with is awesome. Team members are incredible. The guests that say at our properties are incredible.

19:15So I don't know if that answered the question, but hopefully that kind of guides, you know, people into the mindset of how to do it. I want to have one more question before we go to our fanboats question. And that would be, you've been an entrepreneur now for 20 years. If you could go back and give advice to your 18 year old self, your old, like just flipping a house type of self, you're going to be an entrepreneur. Like what advice would that be to them? Yeah, you know, another good question. I've been thinking about this a lot, actually, you know, because after a while of being in entrepreneurship and business, like you start thinking, like you start thinking that, but then you also want to start helping other entrepreneurs as they're coming up, right?

19:47So I've been thinking of that question a lot. And the advice that I've been giving a lot of young entrepreneurs is slow down, but then also speed up, if that makes sense. So slow down with the process. If we're lucky, we have a long time on this earth to build these businesses. We don't need to be the unicorn company tomorrow. That's not the point. Literally the tacky saying of enjoy the journey, not the destination. That's 100 % true. If you're not enjoying the process and the discovery of who you become as an entrepreneur through building businesses and overcoming challenges and solving problems and achieving goals and not achieving goals, if you're not enjoying that, then you have to switch your mindset immediately on that.

20:38When I was younger, I would beat myself up a lot. Like I'm not a millionaire yet. That means I'm a failure as an entrepreneur. So there's a lot of advice I would go back and share, but that's really the most present of what I'm going through now and kind of share with quite a bit of people. I love it. Well, you've been sharing some great insights on this podcast. I love this conversation. We're going to go to our Fan Blitz questions and these are questions submitted from our community. And guys, if you want to join on a world-class entrepreneurs, go to www.youtube.com slash upflip and submit your questions there.

21:08But Eric, ready for our last five questions? Let's do it. Perfect. Number one is, when did you know was the right time to make the leap? Did you wait until your business was earning good enough money first or risk everything? Jump in immediately. I mean, like if obviously you got to, you know, protect yourself, like depending on where you're at in your stage, if you've got a family and responsibilities, don't burn all the boats. You know, I got into entrepreneurship when I was young and my sister told me, she's like, hey, you know, plan B distracts from plan A. So go all in on plan A. and plan A was for me to build a real estate company.

21:41So I quit my carpentry job given I was 18 years old. So I didn't have a lot of responsibilities or 19, whatever it was, I moved into the basement. And for about a year and a half, I was living in different basements of the houses I was working on and flipping, right? So it's like, you know, if you believe in yourself, you believe in your vision and it's a real vision that's solving real problems, bringing real value to the world. And you can see yourself dedicating 100 % of your effort and identity to it, go all in. But make sure that you're not, you know, yeah, just go all in. That's what I gotta say.

22:16No, that's really good. There's a mantra in the entrepreneur community of like belief becomes before results. Yeah, I believe before you actually get the results that you can. Oh, you have to. Number two, what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?

22:31Dude, I don't buy a lot of stuff. I'm not a consumer. I spend most of my money. I have an unlimited budget. when it comes to my health and education. I learned this from my buddy, Dan Martell. Unlimited budget when it comes to education and health. So I invest all of my money into books and masterminds and coaches and all that stuff. And then I also invest all of my money into optimizing my health, right, in every way. So I would say all my money goes there. My personal stuff goes there. We live in a beautiful house here in San Diego. We're not on a budget when it comes to this. So we're blessed in that standpoint.

23:10Everything else goes into business, buying assets for the business, people. So yeah. If you could go back and change one thing about your business, what would it be? I don't know. I don't think I would change anything because I feel like businesses are constantly evolving and changing naturally. Yeah, there's nothing that comes up for me on that. And that's okay. Number four, if you could give someone with not a lot of capital and not many friends in high places, one piece of advice, what would it be? You got to get a lot of friends in high places. Like take the effort to network, meet the people.